Roses and Thorns

September, 2023

Roses and thorns abound. Recently we have been able to support the release of ten different people, and those liberation moments are often uplifting and in some cases particularly moving and/ or bittersweet.

I have been doing release support work for a while but I don't take for granted anything about it. It is different in some way every time and people carry different emotions with them. The bittersweet part comes in as we meet people such as Ibrahim, whose relief and gratitude is evident at encountering welcoming faces after months of being treated as less than human in detention. It is a privilege to be able to be a welcoming face and it deepens my commitment to see the end of this dirty rotten system even more so when I meet gentle souls such as this man. He talked about others he had met in detention, and said, “I believe everyone deserves a chance.” Everything fell into place for him in terms of travel, and he was reunited with his ailing 85 year old father that same night.

Recent themes also include a rise in reports of brutal retaliations against undocumented workers in Buffalo; a dire shortage of affordable housing and shelter space so that we are moving families every few days; and the continued politicization of immigrants, generally, for electoral purposes. Join us for a virtual organizing meeting, first of our new year, to act and agitate for better for our community in our city, October 11 at 7 pm, virtual.

With solidarity and hope,

Jennifer